Sean Leahy

Video: Hear the official theme song of Thomas Vanek's biography

We expressed our love for songs written about NHL players last summer when we did a Top 10 countdown ending with the visually stunning video "Maurice Richard" by Pierre Letourneau.

The latest edition to the catalogue is from Austrian band Delicious Red, whose song "Euphoria" is known as the official soundtrack for Buffalo Sabres forward Thomas Vanek's(notes) biography that was released over the winter. (We're betting there's probably nothing of interest in the book on that offer-sheet situation with Edmonton back in 2007.) According to his website, "Euphoria" describes Vanek's journey from Austria to the U.S. college and finally to the NHL.

In an interview for his website in April, Vanek explained why his book needs a song to accompany it and when he was planning to debut it for his fellow Sabres:

Vanek: Well, the idea for the song is as old as the idea for the book. In the beginning we were just thinking about having a song as background music for my website. When book and song were finished more or less simultaneously everybody involved was just blown away by how well those two projects complimented each other.

[...]

Question: Have other Sabres players already heard the song?

Vanek: No, but I'll be playing it before one of our playoff-games in the locker-room to fire us up. The guys won't be able to avoid that...

Buffalo, of course, lost its opening-round series to the Boston Bruins, 4-2; and while Vanek's song might have been used to pump up his teammates, there's no way it did a better job than, say, what the ode to Janne Pesonen could have offered.